>How do you know this? Take for example the charge that Churchill
>wrongly stated that the American governent deliberately infected
>natives with smallpox blankets. Obviously, this is a matter of some
>contention. What kind of records exist? If this is a subject of
>debate between academics, then why is Churchill guilty of stating
>his position on the issue?
This is dealt with in the full report - which, by the way, reads like no right-wing hatchet job. It repeatedly acknowledges the horrors suffered by Indians, the racism of whites, the ambiguities of the historical record, and the validity of "different ways of knowing." But, in a phrase, the claims made by Churchill on this issue just don't match the sources he cited, and it's not just a narrow miss. And that's when he cites sources at all.
And you can be damned sure that now whenever anyone brings up the genocide of the Indians, apologists will say, "Churchill made all that up."
By the way, Yoshie shows up on p. 77 of the report (p. 78 to a PDF reader):
>Professor Churchill then devoted several paragraphs of Submission B
>to a federal program announced in 1832 to vaccinate American Indians
>against smallpox and the orders issued by Lewis Cass, Secretary of
>War, concerning the implementation of that program. Professor
>Churchill described his source for that account as: "Extracts from
>Diane Pearson's 'Medical Diplomacy and the American Indian: Thomas
>Jefferson, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and the Subsequent
>Effects on American Indian Health and Public Policy' (Wicazo Sa
>Review, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1994) offered by Yoshie Furuhashi in
>'Nothing but the Facts.'" Furuhashi's "Nothing but the Facts" was an
>online posting no longer available at the time of our investigation.
>
>Professor Churchill's citation of Pearson is incorrect in several
>respects, though it is not clear whether the problem originated with
>Furuhashi or him.
Doug